Give Me Back My West Nile!

No, it’s not just a coincidence, it’s probably actually swine flu:

A group of Queens high school students likely brought Mexico’s deadly swine flu epidemic to the city after they went on a wild spring-break party to Cancun earlier this month.

Some seniors from St. Francis Prep in Fresh Meadows took the trip over Easter hiatus two weeks ago. Days later, an outbreak of flu-like symptoms erupted at the school, leaving about 200 kids complaining of being ill.

Yesterday, city health officials confirmed that eight students “have probable human swine influenza” after testing positive for Influenza A, which officials say causes the swine strain of disease.

OK, Now You’re Freaking Me Out

CBS2 is wondering whether a big flu outbreak at a school in Queens is swine-like:

As many as 75 students at St. Francis Preparatory School in Queens got sick on Thursday. More got sick on Friday. What health officials want to know is was it swine flu or something more benign.

There are mounting fears about a deadly swine flu virus that is reported to have killed as many as 60 people in Mexico, one that health officials fear has already seeped into the United States.

St. Francis Prep was ordered to cancel an evening program Friday night because the New York City Department of Health isn’t sure what made students sick Thursday and Friday with flu-like symptoms.

“I just saw lot a lot of kids lined up along the wall near the nurse’s office,” sophomore Kelsey Dittmeir said.

If it’s the flu, the question is what kind of flu? And could it be the unique strain suspected in 20 recent deaths?

Tests are underway.

Good To Know

Apparently it’s just that easy:

A stack of blank birth certificates has been stolen from the city Health Department’s offices, leading investigators to worry that they may have fallen into the hands of terrorists, The Post has learned.

On March 12, an employee discovered that 104 certificates with the agency’s stamp on them were missing from the department’s offices at 125 Worth St., near City Hall, sources said.

It was the first time in 10 years that blank birth certificates were stolen from the department.

The NYPD and the city’s Department of Investigation are investigating.

“It’s like hitting the Lotto for a terrorist,” one investigator said.

. . .

Investigators believe the theft was carried out by someone who has access to the offices, probably an employee.

You Remember Your Middle School Teacher’s Name . . . Who Will Remember Yours?

And if you scare half the city by barricading yourself in a classroom, you get even better name recognition:

Apparently distraught over being removed from a school in the Bronx, a veteran teacher barricaded himself inside a classroom at the school on Friday morning, claiming that he had planted a bomb in the library and threatening to blow it up, the authorities said. About 1,200 students were evacuated, and within three hours, police officials escorted the teacher from the building and said his bomb claim had been false.

. . .

Mr. Garabitos’s bomb threat sent educators and police officers from the Emergency Services Unit scrambling to take precautions and assess the threat. The Police Department dispatched several officers, hostage negotiators and bomb squad technicians to the building, which also houses Junior High School 145 and the Urban Science Academy.

. . .

During negotiators’ talks with Mr. Garabitos while he was barricaded in the classroom, Mr. Browne said, he admitted that he had planted no bomb, but said he had undertaken a hunger strike over the way a disciplinary case against him had been handled. He also said he wanted to see the principal “ousted,” Mr. Browne said.

Ron Davis, a spokesman for the United Federation of Teachers, said that Mr. Garabitos called the city union’s central offices on Friday morning and asked to speak with Randi Weingarten, the president of the union. After he was told she was in Washington (she is also the head of the American Federation of Teachers, the parent union based there), he later spoke to another union official who, with the guidance of police hostage negotiators, assured him that he would be safe and urged him to leave the building.

. . .

At a news conference on Friday afternoon, Ms. Weingarten, the union president, said: “No grievance is redressable in this way. We do not condone this behavior at all.”

She said that a list of concerns prepared by Mr. Garabitos was turned over to the Education Department by the union and that she hoped they would be addressed later.

Screw The Stupid Monkeys

Forgive me for saying so — because lord knows animals are so, so cute, cuddly and I just want to slurp them up through a straw — but when I see such crass grandstanding in advance of final budget votes it almost makes me want to root for the UFT to get another fat buyout . . . or for DEP to hire 2,500 more administrative staff . . . or for the Police Department to lower their retirement age to 38:

Layoffs in the city have spread from the piggy traders on Wall Street to the animals at the Bronx Zoo.

The institution is closing four exhibits and shipping hundreds of creatures to zoos and aquariums around the country, officials told the City Council Cultural Affairs Committee yesterday.

Deer, bats, porcupines, foxes, lemurs, caimans and antelopes will be pink-slipped as part of the 114-year-old zoo’s effort to cope with a $15 million budget shortfall.

“We plan to close four exhibits, four areas of the zoo . . . and we will have to reduce our collections in order to handle the cuts that we already know about,” said Bob Cook, executive vice president of the Wildlife Conservation Society, which runs the zoo.

Councilman Domenic Recchia (D-Brooklyn), who chairs the committee, was incredulous when Cook told him the loss of “hundreds” of animals would be permanent — not a temporary fix during the recession.

“It’s much, much more serious than what I even thought it was going to be,” Recchia said.

But perhaps I’m just being surly.